This is against the stipulated 33%; more green cover is now govt’s priority.
What is more important - a good house to live in or fresh air to breathe? Urban facilities or cool environs? Such eternal quandaries may never get a decisive answer, but what they do is draw our attention to the dire need to conserve the ecology, our trees which we take for granted and our forests whose value is much beyond the timber it yields.
As the World Forestry Day is celebrated around the globe today, it might be a good time to hark back that Gujarat is losing its forest cover rapidly. Veteran foresters who have witnessed the changing topography of Gujarat confide that industrialisation and urbanisation is the biggest threat to forests in Gujarat. In South Gujarat, tree chopping for timber is a close second.
Statistics tell their own tale. Country's total forest area is 21.05% which should be at least 33%. Gujarat's statistic is even worse. The latest report of the Forest Survey of India 2011 pegs state's forest cover at 9.66% of the total geographical area. There is increase in mangrove cover, but decease in moderately dense forest. In fact, the tree cover of the state total geographical area is
a mere 4%.
The only ray of hope, if any, is that after abusing nature and its resources for decades, the focus of establishments has now shifted on bringing back lost glory at a premium. How to increase the state's green cover is amongst the top priorities of Gujarat government these days and the buzz word to achieve this is social forestry.
According to senior forest officials, the department has planned greening of 15,000 hectares in the year 2012-13 only at a whopping budgeted expense of Rs114 crore. A senior forest official confided that 10.5 crore saplings are to be distributed.
"We are trying to restore the ecology around water bodies. Plantation around rivers and ravines, village ponds, lakes etc will be taken up with focus. Roadside plantations are a priority. We are also trying to bring back indigenous trees like Mahudo, Desi Mango, Khati Amthi and Rayan," he said.
Conservator of forests & member secretary, Gujarat Biodiversity Board, AP Singh says, "It is the high time to make aware the local people, conservationists, biologists, NGOs, scientists and government functionaries to know the importance of biodiversity in general and wild biodiversity in particular on the eve of World Forestry Day-2012 and conserve it for the survival of living beings as well as the coming generations to witness to the valuable biodiversity."
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